The Sword of Michael - eARC by Marcus Wynne Page B

into the second, batting him down with her massive paws; the last closed on me as I scrambled to my feet. I ducked between his wild swing (and I saw the look of terror and violation on his face, the look of the remotely controlled or possessed) and that sheer human terror held me back, for just an instant, till my self-preservation instincts drove me to stomp the outside of his leg and put him down.
    Remotely controlled.
    Demonic Dark Forces or the Cabal? Or both? Either way, the controller would be near by. I looked at the black-haired blockhead sitting in his Jeep.
    First In Front appeared in front of me and grinned back over his shoulder. Follow me…
    “Okay, Infantry…” I said.
    And I did. When in doubt, attack head-on. Hoka hey!
    I ran right at the Jeep. The controller, if that’s what he was, widened his eyes and slammed the Jeep into gear. He hit the gas, peeling backwards away from me. First In Front flew at him, then stopped as though he’d hit a pane of glass. The Jeep backed into traffic and then roared away. First In Front looked at me.
    “No,” I said. A vehicle in the hands of a panicked pawn was as dangerous as a firearm in a crowd. The three farm hands were sitting up, looking around with the confused look of accident victims.
    “It’s lifted,” First In Front said. “They went with the controlling one.”
    “That’s no sorcerer,” I said.
    “No,” Tigre said. She sat and licked one paw. Burt circled and landed in a flurry of black feathers.
    “We should go,” the Crow said. “You hurt that one, and he’s going to get his head clear quick.”
    “Who’s controlling?” I said.
    “Hidden,” the Three said.
    I nodded. “Let’s go find him.”
    I jogged away, First In Front and Tigre bounding along with me, Burt flying overwatch, leaving the dazed meat-puppets behind.
    My cell phone beeped from an unanswered call. It was from Sabrina.

Chapter 8
    I squeezed into a back table at Gigi’s, where I could see the front entrance and still duck out the back exit. First In Front lounged at an empty table across from me, invisible to all but me, still as a tree. On the sidewalk in front, Tigre sat, her back to the window, an invisible guardian; Burt circled overhead—I felt his watchful presence circling.
    It was good to know that my protective spirits were on guard.
    I hit redial and after six or seven rings, Sabrina answered. She was smoking a cigarette and took a long draw before she said, “You don’t mess around, do you, Marius?”
    “What do you mean, babe?”
    “You’ve got an extreme case of extreme addiction. Adrenaline junkie.” Another long draw on her cigarette. “Maybe you were a biker in another life.”
    “Could be,” I said. “Was I the biker or the bitch?”
    She laughed that deep throaty laugh. “You could never be my bitch, honey. Though I’d let you try it out.”
    I felt her shift gears and drop into an altered consciousness as she channeled the information she’d found for me. “You have a complex situation, Marius. I’ll try and keep it simple. I know how you get confused. You’re right about past lives…there’s history here. An old curse. We can unravel it, it’s having a hard time sticking to you anyway. You’ve fought this sorcerer. It’s a he. You’ve fought him before. Several lifetimes. Black hair, pale skin, dark eyes, square head, right?”
    “Yeah. That’s him.”
    “You should see him in a Nazi uniform.”
    “He play dress up?”
    She laughed. “Could be. But he was one in the war. Goes further back, too. Atlantis. He’s a Son of Belial.”
    I sighed. “Couldn’t be easy, could it?”
    “No, baby,” she said. “That’s the lot of a Son of the Light.”
    Yes. It is.
    “Go on,” I said.
    “You’ve thwarted him over and over. He’s obsessed. By you and how you’ve beaten him time and again. Every time he thinks he’s beaten you down, you fool him. Again and again. You know that great gift you have? For pissing the bad guys